Abstract
For almost 30 years, there have been active discussions about the taxonomic impediment and the challenge this represents to address the current human-induced biodiversity crisis. The total number of species on our planet is unknown, and its various estimates are widely divergent, but consensus exists that we are far from having inventoried half, and most likely one-tenth, of the species still present on earth today.
Taxonomy is an undervalued biological discipline and there is a global lack of academic education in taxonomy and of properly trained taxonomists, that is, scientists who distinguish and classify taxa according to explicit concepts and data-based hypotheses, and name them respecting nomenclatural rules and checking type specimens. Instead of relying solely on barcodes and/or photographs, we need intentional and mindful syntheses of molecular, morphological and other data to aid the progress of our knowledge of the vanishing biodiversity.